Richard Suskind

Richard Suskind (May 2, 1925 – September 14, 1999) was a children's author who participated with author Clifford Irving in creating a fraudulent autobiography of the reclusive entrepreneur Howard Hughes. Suskind was incarcerated for five months of a six-month prison sentence for his role in collaborating with Irving on the hoax. He died in 1999, aged 74, in Woodland Hills Los Angeles County, California, USA.

He was portrayed in the 2007 film The Hoax by Alfred Molina.

Richard Suskind was born in New York City and attended public schools there. In 1943, he joined the Army and served in the 8th Armored Division as a machine gunner in the Battle of the Bulge, in the Netherlands and in Germany. After the war he continued his education on the G.I. Bill in such schools as Columbia University, the University of Florence, the University of Paris, the Juilliard School of Music, and the Paris Conservatory of Music.

In 1948, Suskind served with the Israeli Army during the war for independence. He then joined the merchant marine, and in the next two years traveled around the world twice. He spent two years in Italy, five in Paris, and seven years on the Spanish island of Ibiza, part of the Balearic group in the Mediterranean.

A writer since the age of fifteen, Suskind was the author of three books and more than one hundred articles and short stories. He was married and had one son.

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